Put Hiking into your training plan

How would you fit in a once off, 4/5hr hike into your cycling training plan. I have a 3hr endurance ride once a week, maybe remove that for the hiking so as I’m not over reaching that week. What are thoughts

How fit are you? Do you have a race coming up? What’s your training volume like now, and how fast do you recover from 4-5 hour hikes? Is this a leisure hike where you slow walk for 5 miles without any elevation, or are you climbing 5000’?

I’m not sure how anyone can answer this question with any accuracy without a lot more background info.

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8.5/10 fitness ATM
I won’t be planning the hike round race time
I don’t know how fast I recover from a hike never really thought if that.
It’d be a medium level, up to 1100meters over 12km and back down again.

Just thought there might be a general rule of thumb

I can’t answer that question but I would add that I walk my dogs for an hour every day and I often wonder how that might impact my training load…

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Hiking sounds like…biking without a bike? Sounds awful :grimacing:

Also consider the likelihood of the hike giving you some soreness. How often do you hike & what are the surfaces like that you’ll be traversing on the day? That sort of duration on scrappy surfaces is a lot to do in one day if you’re not accustomed to the activity because it puts different stresses on the body. And descending is hard work on the joints. Altogether it could make your first set of intervals thereafter a [more] miserable experience. Be prepared to drop &/or push back a workout.

In terms of the metabolic load, I think of a climb in my city that’s 1200m for 17km. Climbing at 70% of my 4w/kg FTP got me up there in 1h33’. At a guess, if your numbers are similar to mine & you’re doing that climb on foot in just over 2h without a bike but then walking back down, you’re probably not far off the TSS of a 2-2½ hour ride. So if you’re on the edge of too much fatigue then it might help to drop the endurance ride.

Same. But I don’t factor it into Trainer Road or Training Peaks. Just Strava for the dog pics. :dog2: :wink:

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Data point of one - but did a 10ish mile hike and it took a few days to recover from that. Noticeable amount of muscle fatigue when pedaling - particularly in the glutes. Probably didn’t help that I did a 40 mile ride before hand. Somehow our advertised 5 mile hike was one-way and didn’t include the return back.

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I am a fairly frequent hiker. I don’t adjust for them and just work through any resulting fatigue.

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Just as a serious point, I stopped putting pet photos on Strava. For similar reasons to people putting pictures of their expensive bikes combined with accurate GPS…sigh.

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I record a walk as a run to get it into the TR calendar. RLGL however, seems a bit sensitive to them.

What are you referring to? Are pets or bikes being stolen? I’ve been using Strava for years and have not experienced (or even heard of) this. Hoping you are just being cautious.

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Yea I was curious too…wasnt sure what he was alluding to…

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Are you tracking your heart rate during your hikes? That might be a good indicator.

If I’m reading your description correctly: a 24 km hike in 4 to 5hrs sounds like some good endurance work to me. I’m guessing you’re carrying a pack/water etc. too.

We carry the minimum, water and lunch about 2kg. Actually I have my garmin watch which has body battery so I can get a rough idea next time of exertion

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For a one-off thing, skipping the longer endurance ride for the hike sounds like a good idea. :slight_smile:

Just keep in touch with how your body is feeling/recovering after the hike – they can really do a number on your legs if you haven’t been hiking in a while!!

Sorry if my vagueness caused confusion.

I seem to recall some stories about expensive bikes being targeted and stolen from garages/sheds and at the time there discussions that thieves had used Strava to track them.

I have heard similar stories about expensive dogs being stolen and I would imagine there’s a similar theme.

Some determined thief could learn a lot about regular routes (rides or dog walks) and more worrying they could learn a lot about the regular timing of those. And then learn when the home was empty.

(In similar veins in the UK, rich footballers’ houses are targeted when everyone knows they are away playing a match)

That said, if you have set privacy properly, then you can do a lot to prevent it. All about reducing risk.

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Yeah I think it’s wise to have a protected strava account, but realistically if someone has your name they can find out where your bikes are.

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No worries. Your post did sound quite paranoid to me when I read it. Your explanation (not that you needed to give one) makes perfect sense. :+1: :slightly_smiling_face:

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I thought the opposite: photos of dogs whose breeds have a reputation for being capable of inflicting substantial wounding might deter the theft of bikes. But then again they’re not the dogs typically being photographed in my circles.

I start my GPS traces at one of three switchbacks near my house, but never at my house. So Strava doesn’t know where I live. Yeh, so I’ll lose a few hundred horizontal metres or a few vertical metres per ride or run, but whatevs, vanity metrics. Most of my riding mates know where I live, but they all have more expensive bikes than me.

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